Wednesday, December 23, 2015

We ought to retire the ISIS recruitment meme. We ought to
stop accusing everyone who speaks ill of Islam of being an ISIS recruitment
tool. And we ought to rid ourselves of the notions that if only we say nice
things about Islam, then somehow or other ISIS will shrink into the desert.

After all, soft power has its limitations.
Those who believe we are responsible for ISIS and who believe that if only we
close Gitmo there will be no more ISIS are saying that they do not want to fight with guns. They
prefer to show their weakness and to show how much they respect Islam.

We do not know the whole story about what happened at
Benghazi when Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were
killed. But we do know that then
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed it on a video. Hillary now denies
saying it but the parents of the victims all recall at the time that HRC told
them, to their faces that the Obama administration was on the case and would
soon punish those responsible: especially the guy who made the video that
supposedly incited the attack. As you know, that very filmmaker was
unceremoniously thrown into jail.

Think about it: how much do you think that we should curtail our freedom of expression because some deranged terrorists might get offended?

If that were the only time anyone associated with the Obama
administration had used the ISIS recruitment meme, it would be one thing. But,
we keep hearing it, against Gitmo, but also, most recently from HRC herself, this time brandished
against one Donald Trump. She claimed that ISIS was running recruitment videos
featuring Trump. She suggested that, in them, the Republican frontrunner was seen saying that we
should not allow any more Muslims to immigrate. Apparently, this so inflames
Muslim souls that they run off to join ISIS.

Now, the highly estimable Daily Mail offers us a glimpse at
an ISIS propaganda video. It does not highlight Donald Trump, but instead draws
Muslim attention toward none other than Bill Clinton, the wanna-be first dude, and labels him a fornicator. Who knew? And, it also attacks Obama and George W. Bush.

A
propaganda video the ISIS terror army released last month in several languages
used the image of former U.S. President Bill Clinton as a rallying point,
calling him a 'fornicator' whose wishes were carried out by America's military
in the last decade of the 20th Century.

The
four-minute video, titled 'No Respite,' urges male Muslims to take up the cause
of the ISIS 'caliphate' and counter the influence of America.

Hillary
Clinton, the Democratic Party's front-runner to succeed President Barack Obama,
claimed during a primary debate on Saturday that Donald Trump's heated
anti-Muslim rhetoric had become a recruiting tool for the Middle Eastern
terrorists.

And, also:

The ISIS
video, which was distributed in English, French, Russian, and Turkish,
also includes brief cameos by Obama – labeled incorrectly as a 'legislator' –
and his predecessor George W. Bush, a 'liar.'

America,
as the video describes it, is 'a secular state built on man-made laws, whose
soldiers fight for the interests of government legislators, liars, fornicators,
corporations and for the freedoms of sodomites.'

In
addition to showing Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton, the 'No Respite' video
includes a tableau of corporate logos to hint at a profit motive for American
military intervention in the Middle East.

It’s probably a bad idea to attempt to fight ISIS using soft
power anyway. As for ISIS propaganda, it emphasizes American capitalism,
American decadence and American sexual behaviors. We don’t really want to
muzzle the gay rights movement because its words are being used as an ISIS
recruitment tool, do we?

After all, everyone knows—at least I had thought that
everyone knew—that the best terrorist recruitment tool is military success,
whether terrorist operations against Western targets or terrorists acquiring
territory. The so-called caliphate has been a boon to ISIS. Conquering Mosul was
a major recruitment tool. Any signs of American weakness or of American deference to Islam are also major ISIS recruitment tools... because they suggest that the terrorist campaign is making Islam more respected, if only in the sense of more feared, in the world.

Obviously, when your fornicating husband is starring in
an ISIS recruitment video, it’s probably a bad idea to draw attention to ISIS
recruitment videos. Obviously, HRC was speaking off the cuff or she ought to fire a few members of her crack staff.

When she was called out for her error, HRC, through her spokesperson, refused to
apologize for lying about said recruitment video. The meaning: she is looking
forward to fighting it out with Donald Trump, mano a mano.